Martinez, though, continued standing at parade rest, and as the men realized that he was watching them, straightening their backs, they stopped talking.

Speaking in a low, menacing tone, “I just wanna tell you,” Martinez said, “that for a bunch’a pussies, you fuckers…” As the smiles on the faces of the men faded, the sergeant’s frown unexpectedly turned upward. “…did real good! Drop your gear where you’re standin’ an’ grab some chow! Dismissed!”

“Yeah!”

***

The field mess unit: Cooked on base, the food was transported to the bivouac area by truck and kept hot in butane-heated steam tables.

There are two alternating, non-commissioned duty cooks. One remained in the bivouac area for lunch, supper and overnight for breakfast. The duty cook was relieved after breakfast when the chow wagon came from base with that day’s lunch and the relieving duty cook.

The company mess was in the northern perimeter of the campground, beneath a camouflaged tent cover.

“Yeah,” holding his tray forward, waiting for Skorupski to drop a ladle of chocolate pudding into the one remaining empty compartment, “damned hungry!”

“Shit! I’d taken bets the two’a you kikes would’a never made it all the way on your own. Come on, tell ol’ Skorp the truth. You two fuckers passed out an’ a truck had’a haul your worthless asses up here, huh?” Smiling, he looked for approval from the man standing behind Norman and Mitchell, but none came. “Oh, no, wait! I’ll bet your ol’ man called the base commander an’ they brought you fuckers here in one’a them nice open Jeeps. Almost like the convertibles all you sheenies drive around in back home, huh?”

“Yeah, sure, Skorupski, you fuckin’ Polack prick. My ol’ man’s a great pal of General Macarthur!” Norman said angrily. “How’d you get up here?” Curling his upper lip contemptuously, “You fat-ass fuck!”

After a long, forced march, the men were fed a choice meal, and this day’s menu consisted of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, steamed cauliflower, fresh green salad, biscuits and chocolate pudding.

Digging another overflowing ladle of pudding out of the deep tray, Skorupski slapped it onto Norman’s tray, but, most of it missing the tray, splashed onto Norman’s hand and splattered over the front of his tunic. “Whoops, sorry ’bout that, too, Normie… Next!”

The two glared at each other until, “Come on, Parminter,” the man behind nudged Norman. “Fuck ’em. Move your ass an’ give the rest of us a chance at the fuckin’ chow.”

“Yeah, sure.” Turning away, Norman followed Mitchell to a table. “That prick!” Dropping his tray, looking back, staring at Skorupski, “That fuckin’ asshole!” Wiping the pudding from between his fingers with a napkin, Norman then tried to blot it off his olive-green tunic, but only succeeded in rubbing the chocolate in where it showed as a large, brown stain. “Shit!” Stepping over the bench, he sat between Caraboolad and Mitchell.

“Know what, Normie?” In all the years he’d know him, Mitchell had never seen his friend that angry. Trying to calm him down, “I’ll bet this ain’t half bad.” Spearing a piece of cauliflower, putting it in his mouth, he chewed. “Umm, good shit!”

“I do believe that putz has invented something here.” Stabbing another, larger piece of cauliflower, Mitchell held it up. “Think I’ll call it a cauliflowercicle. Mmm, yummy!” Turning his fork upside down, the chunk of cauliflower slipped off and fell into the pudding with a sickly, wet plop.

***

The bivouac area for the men of Able, Baker, Charlie and Dog platoons was on a low-slung, grass-swept saddle valley surrounded by gentle, rolling hills. The immediate staging area was a quarter mile of freshly mown prairie grass that had been hacked down just days before by a team of Army regulars. The lighter green stubble inside the mown perimeter and the knee-high grass outside was dotted with thousands of deeper green circles where, throughout the years, herds of grazing cattle had left countless deposits of manure that had further fertilized the already rich soil.

On the crest of a hill about two-thirds of a mile to the south, silhouetted against the cloudless sky, was a large herd of grazing cattle that had been moved out of the way of this invading army by the dairy combine that leased this land from the U.S. Army.

***

Waiting for Martinez’ call that would signal the end of lunch and the start of that afternoon’s training exercises, that Norman and Mitchell both looked forward to—training for the firing of the mortar that they’d so laboriously hauled all this distance. Sitting, smoking, their backs resting against the trunk of a tree, the boys watched as a team of regulars dropped two-man tents off the back of a truck.

“Even when we were kids at Baylor everyone knew he was a schmuck. Would you believe me’n’Frankie thought, ’cause he was the oldest kid there, that he’d know all about girls and what they have here,” pointing to his crotch.

“Skorupski?” Norman asked incredulously, “You really thought that asshole, son of a bitch knew enough about anything to tell you anything?”

“At least he told me’n’Frank what it’s called.”

“Oh, yeah?” Recalling the day Mitchell came home from Baylor and the conversation on their way to the DouglasTheatre. “He’s the one you learned it from, huh? Skorupski’s the guy that told you ’bout pricks’n’cunts?”

“Yeah, and would you believe he’s so stupid he told us that if you suck on a shvartzer lady’s tit you’d get chocolate milk? And the asshole really believed it! He even showed Frankie’n’me how he beats his meat.”

“Skorupski showed you?”

“Yeah! He whipped his dick out and started doing it.”

Norman could not believe that any guy would do that. “And he had a boner?”

“No, not at first, but he sure got one fast enough.”

“Yeah, that I believe! He’s probably a homo, too.”

“Yeah, no shit, he probably is! And for a guy as old as he was, he didn’t know a fuckin’ thing about fuckin’.”

“Shit, Lipensky, for guys as old as we are now, we still don’t know a fuckin’ thing about fuckin’.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “we don’t know much more now then we did then, but least- ways we don’t go ’round handin’ out a bunch’a bullshit.”

“Jesus!” Actually, Mitchell felt that regardless of his size and rank, he should have done something about Skorupski’s anti-Semitic slurs. “I’d love to find some way to get even with that fucker.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Taking one last drag on the cigarette, Norman ground it out on a rock then field stripped the butt.

“I’d love to think of a way to fix that anti-Semitic, Polack bastard’s ass.”

Leaning his head against the tree, Norman stared vacantly at the higher grass as it undulated in the slight breeze… “Hey!” Sitting up suddenly, he looked at Mitchell. “What did you say?”

“Huh?” Looking at his friend, “Nothin’. I didn’t say nothin’.”

“Yeah, Mitchie, you did. Not now, but before.”

Thinking a moment, “I don’t know what I said before. Why?”

“I… Maybe I got an idea.” Standing, he went to the outer perimeter of the mown area, walked into the higher, wavering grass and, seemingly looking for something, stopped. “Yeah!”

“Normie, what the hell are you…”

“Fall in! Third platoon fall in!”

Lifting himself off the ground, joining Norman as he walked toward the forming double column, “What’s your idea?”

“I think I know how we can do it.”

“Do what?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

***

Standing at ease alongside the gear they’d dropped when dismissed for lunch, “See them tents!” Martinez said, jerking his thumb towards the mound of green canvas. “I want the pairs’a’you,” pointing to two men at a time, “you’n’you, pairing each man with the man directly next to him, “to grab one’a them tents an’ bring it here…. You two, Klickner’n’Tannascolli, drop your tent here.” Martinez paced two yards. “You two, Ryan’n’Linville, here. Parminter’n’Stanislawski, here.”

“Hey, Sarge, why can’t Parminter’n’me double up?”

“Ain’t that sweet, La-pimp-sky! You two wanna sleep together, maybe do a little butt fuckin’.”

Some of the men laughed.

“This ain’t the fuckin’ Y.M.C.A., La-pimp-sky. You do like I said! Oak’n’Cleary, an’,” smiling, “Caraboolad’n’La-pimp-sky, here.”

Smiling, “I thought you’d like that, La-pimp-sky. Pretty good idea, eh? Puttin’ a Jew an A-rab together; just like the United Nations. You fuckers gotta learn to live together, like the rest’a the fuckin’ civilized world.”

Glaring at the sergeant, “I ain’t no fuckin’ A-rab! I told’j’ya, I’m a…”

Within an hour, two evenly spaced rows of tents were erected, with each man’s gear stowed neatly inside.

***

By order of Captain Trainor, the six-man mortar squad had been reduced to four men consisting of Mitchell, who, by way of walkie-talkie, hypothetically, was to receive and repeat firing coordinates to Norman, who, hypothetically, was to find them on a grid map, make the proper elevation settings on the sighting device and, when ready, give Mitchell the order to fire, and he, hypothetically, was to drop the two-and-a-half-pound, six-millimeter projectile into the tube, where it would make contact with a firing pin, that, with a loud ping, would fire the round out of the tube where it goes up, arches in the air, drops, lands, and explodes, hypothetically, someplace, hopefully, within the general vicinity of the ordered firing site. Ferris and Linville were to be ammo carriers, moving back and forth from the, hypothetical, ammo dump to the mortar site wearing pocketed ammo vests holding ten projectiles each.

“Okay, you two guys, kind’a, know how it’s done.” Spoken to Norman and Mitchell. “I want you to head up there…” Martinez pointed to a high knoll about eight-hundred yards away, “an’ dig in.”

“You go with ’em,” pointing to Linville and Ferris. “Leave the vests there an’ haul ass back here. If we do get the order to fire—an’ I really doubt we will—then it’ll be, at the most, a couple’a rounds, so it don’t make no sense for the four’a you fuckers to lay around there soakin’ up the sun on Uncle’s time. An’ remember, there’s supposed to be gooks dug in there somewhere, so the four’a you stay low an’ don’t bunch up!”

In Camp Pendleton had a gang of schmuck comedians in the mess-hall that pick on anybody not being blue-eyes-freckled-blond all American boy, blacks got the "special" treatment, until one day some add a gallon of laxative in the chow that make from officers to privates get the runs.
That gang got the moss assorted blue, yellow, green, brown bruises you gonna ever seen in your life. They stop picking on too.